AG's Scratchin' Post

[Alex G]

BP told feds it could handle oil spill 60 times larger than Deepwater Horizon
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/bp_told_feds_it_could_handle_o.html

In its 2009 exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon well, BP PLC states that the company could handle a spill involving as much as 12.6 million gallons of oil per day, a number 60 times higher than its current estimate of the ongoing Gulf disaster.

In associated documents filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the company says that it would be able to skim 17.6 million gallons of oil a day from the Gulf in the event of a spill.

As of Tuesday, BP reported recovering 6 million gallons of oily water since the ongoing spill began four weeks ago. BP spokesman Tom Mueller said that only about 10 percent of the skimmed liquid was oil, which would amount to about 600,000 gallons of oil collected thus far.

Mueller also said via e-mail Tuesday that "the spill has stayed about the same size or even shrunk on the water as a result of our response efforts."

Skytruth.org, a website that monitors environmental problems using satellite imagery, reported Monday that the spill had grown to 10,170 square miles, based on NASA images. John Amos, head of Skytruth, told the Press-Register then that the spill had approximately doubled in size since Friday.

BP did not respond to questions about the NASA images.

BP's Deepwater Horizon Initial Exploration Plan suggests that the well's unchecked flow would be 6.8 million gallons a day.

An emergency would activate the company's Oil Spill Response Plan, a 582-page document submitted to federal regulators in 2008 and designed to cover all BP operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the document, the response plan is triggered "in the event the spill cannot be controlled." It also calls for the company to "assemble a team of technical experts to respond to the situation."

The document provides no detailed discussions of how a runaway well would be stopped, nor does it reflect any plan for devices such as an insertion tube, which is now recovering an estimated 84,000 gallons of oil daily, or the failed containment dome.

The plan includes detailed descriptions of the merits and limitations of three primary mitigation methods used at the surface: dispersants, skimming, and burning.

The response plan is exhaustive when it comes to staging a mitigation effort. It provides lists of suppliers, contractors, and phone numbers for federal and state officials who should be notified in the event of a worst-case spill.

Extensive flowcharts describe who should be called, and when. Organizational charts provide titles and positions for dozens of people to be involved in managing the crisis.

The plan dictates staging areas for responders and their equipment. It gives phone numbers for local media, results of marine toxicology tests on various dispersants, and maps showing how long it will take to get supplies to various locations.

There is a list of equipment required to set up a Joint Information Center, including a podium, four to six telephones, an answering machine, photocopier, computer and printer, a wall clock, and various other office supplies.

In the document, BP states that the company "has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst-case discharge," which it defines as 300,000 barrels, or about 12.6 million gallons, of oil per day.

It goes on to detail dozens of skimming vessels available around the Gulf that could collectively recover 17.6 million gallons a day.

It says dispersants will be able to sink 6,080 to 7,600 barrels per day into the Gulf.

A safety data sheet about the principal dispersant that the company has reported using during the ongoing spill says "no toxicity studies have been conducted on this product," and labels "the potential human hazard: High."

The equipment section of the response plan's worst-case scenario chapter does not offer any source for fire boom. Burning, which requires such boom, is considered a primary response option for large spills in the Gulf, and its use was pre-approved by the government in 1994. The Press-Register has reported that in the days after the spill, federal officials had to purchase a boom from a company in Illinois to conduct the first test burn.

The BP plan contains two websites detailing locations where response supplies are stored on the Gulf Coast. One of the addresses directs the user to what appears to be a Japanese social networking site. Using the same address with the ".org" suffix rather than the listed ".com" leads to a spill response company.

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